CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and ROSTOCK, Germany and BERLIN, Feb. 29, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CENTOGENE (Nasdaq: CNTG), a commercial-stage company focused on rare diseases that transforms real-world clinical and genetic data into actionable information for patients, physicians and pharmaceutical companies, will be raising awareness and building community for all those affected by rare genetic diseases with simultaneous events in Berlin, Germany, Lahore, Pakistan, and Mexico City, Mexico on Rare Disease Day 2020. CENTOGENE’s Rare Disease Day events will bring together patients, advocacy groups, policy makers, researchers, health professionals, and the wider community – focused on improving the overall knowledge and identifying solutions to the challenges that rare diseases pose to patients and their families.
"Rare Disease Day is extremely important for people everywhere and from all backgrounds to come together and increase awareness of rare diseases. While rare diseases are often overlooked due to the very nature of the term, in reality, rare diseases affect roughly 350 million individuals around the world ─ having an immense impact on not only the patients, but also our communities. Our mission is to shorten the diagnostic odyssey of all rare patients, and with these global events we want to emphasize the vital collaboration that will make life-changing impacts," said Prof. Arndt Rolfs, Founder and CEO of CENTOGENE.
CENTOGENE’s Rare Disease Day 2020 activities will kick off in Lahore, Pakistan. The Company together with the Children’s Hospital of Lahore, will hold a special Rare Disease Day 2020 celebration spotlighting the diagnostic and everyday challenges patients and their families face. The event will include presentations, talks, and a panel discussion reflecting the perspectives of patients and patient organizations.
The rare disease spotlight will then be passed to Berlin, where policy makers, public authorities, researchers, health professionals, and community members will come together under one roof to discuss innovative approaches to shorten the diagnostic odyssey of rare disease patients. Throughout the day, there will be presentations, musical performances, and short films featuring rare disease patients and their families. As part of the event, CENTOGENE will kick-off the inaugural Rare Disease Film Festival 2021.
CENTOGENE, the Iberoamerican Alliance of Rare Diseases (ALIBER), and the Mexican Organization of Rare Diseases (OMER) will then wrap-up Rare Disease Day alongside patients, patient organizations, physicians, politicians, and community members from all over Latin America. The event will emphasize the vital role of patient organizations, and serve as an opportunity for all sides to discuss a collaborative approach and modern technologies to create life-changing solutions for rare disease patients and their families
As part of the global events, CENTOGENE will provide details on the film competition that will immediately commence following the 2020 events. “We are excited to have whet the creative appetite of artists for the film competition”, said Arndt Rolfs. "This will help the topic of rare diseases gain the attention it deserves - after all, it affects over 350 million people worldwide."
More information can be found online:
www.rdd2020.eu
Media contact:
CENTOGENE
press@centogene.com
MC Services AG
Anne Hennecke
anne.hennecke@mc-services.eu
About CENTOGENE
CENTOGENE engages in diagnosis and research around rare diseases transforming real-world clinical and genetic data into actionable information for patients, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies. Our goal is to bring rationality to treatment decisions and to accelerate the development of new orphan drugs by using our extensive rare disease knowledge, including epidemiological and clinical data and innovative biomarkers. CENTOGENE has developed a global proprietary rare disease platform based on our real-world data repository with approximately 2.1 billion weighted data points from approximately 500,000 patients representing over 120 different countries as of December 31, 2019, or an average of approximately 600 data points per patient.
The Company’s platform includes epidemiologic, phenotypic and genetic data that reflects a global population, and also a biobank of these patients’ blood samples. CENTOGENE believes this represents the only platform that comprehensively analyzes multi-level data to improve the understanding of rare hereditary diseases, which can aid in the identification of patients and improve our pharmaceutical partners’ ability to bring orphan drugs to the market. As of December 31, 2019, the Company collaborated with over 35 pharmaceutical partners for over 40 different rare diseases.